


Scientists Doing Stupid Things

by Rehearsal_Dweller



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 07:33:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehearsal_Dweller/pseuds/Rehearsal_Dweller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Night Vale refuses to hurt Carlos, apparently the logical thing to do is NOT to accept it and carry on living, but to go investigate Night Vale's sister town. You know, just in case it bites.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scientists Doing Stupid Things

**Author's Note:**

> I got a lot of prompts that ended up involving Kevin yesterday and the day before. It wasn't on purpose (well, it was, but it was all Xander's fault.  
> This prompt was as follows: "Cecil has to save Carlos from some kind of danger….er, I just want angry Cecil kickin ass and being awesome and angry and such" and wasn't actually from Xander, but they still end up in Desert Bluffs, so...

Night Vale is an objectively, quantifiably dangerous place. Weird things happen all the time, dangerous happenings are a daily occurrence, and it’s not a town meeting if there isn’t a death count.

But the frustrating thing about this from a scientific point of view is that the local team of scientists can’t  _investigate_ these strange happenings because they all seem to avoid their team leader, Carlos.

(There was one  _dreadful_  exception, in which he walked straight into a dangerous situation and everyone thought he was dead for a few minutes, but no one talked about that.)

They decided, as much because they really needed to get out of the lab for a while as for any genuinely sciencey reason, to go on a little field trip to Night Vale’s sister town.

Desert Bluffs is a mirror image of Night Vale.

Now, this is scientifically interesting in and of itself. But the thing that makes it really fascinating is that the general outlook is so… backwards. Everything  _looks_ the same - or maybe the same three inches to the left - but nothing feels even remotely like it belongs on the same planet, much less in an identical town.

Oh, and Carlos disappeared.

They’d tracked him down, though, to a blood soaked radio station on the edge of town.

Curiously enough, Cecil had beaten them there.

(This was curious mostly because the scientists had come to an immediate and unanimous decision  _not to tell Cecil_.)

He was pulling off a certain off-putting pissed-off-deity vibe with distressing ease, and when he spoke there was a slight echo to his voice, like there were other voices faintly speaking with him.

“ _Kevin_ ," Cecil was saying, and  _oh dear_ , were his eyes glowing? " _Give the scientist back. We told you you cannot have him."_

_"That’s no fun, Cecil,"_ the other man - Cecil’s Desert Bluffs twin, apparently named Kevin, whose dark eyes were… also… glowing. Excellent. He was restraining a semi-conscious Carlos by holding onto his wrists with one bloody hand. " _Sharing is caring, after all."_

_"Give. Him. **Back.** ”_

And then suddenly, they were back in the lab in Night Vale.

Well, most of them.

They took a count, and they were all there but one.

That one being Carlos.

(And Cecil. Cecil was gone, too.)

The scientists drew straws (the most scientific of person-choosing methods) to see who should go looking for him.

(It turned out that they needn’t have worried, though, because they discovered him sound asleep in his own bed in his own home, with Cecil on the couch keeping watch over things. And considering that the new popular theory around the lab that the reason that Carlos never got hurt in Night Vale was Cecil himself, they were quite content to back out the door and run back to the lab, leaving Carlos in Cecil’s unfaltering care.)


End file.
